...one nickname for an orthopedist is orthopod. They are the carpenters in medicine. They use chisels and sterilized monkey wrenches...


Yelling: "Dr. Cacker! Dr. Cacker!" and commotion in the waiting room.

Dr. Cacker runs to the waiting room. His nurse and six people are there, three supporting an older man who has a bone sticking out of his upper arm. The nurse is shaking her head. One person is angry, two are crying, the bone person looks like he may faint.

"Set him in a chair!" says Dr. Cacker, "Call an ambulance!"

"Ambulance!" says a younger man, hostile. "The ER is closed!"

"Closed!" says Dr. Cacker.

"Four docs are left. One got appendicitis. The second is taking out her appendix. One's mother died and the fourth stayed on call for 72 hours and has some kind of sickness. He's in the ICU. The doc taking out the appendix is trying to keep him alive. There are no ambulances."

"But I am a naturopath!"

"Well, you are a doctor. Help my father."

The older man slumps forward.

"Move him to the floor and put his feet up," snaps the nurse. They do. "Sterile dressings." She is an RN. She looks at Dr. Cacker. "He needs to be splinted. And there is not bad arterial bleeding."

Dr. Cacker nods. "Correct." he says. The two other clients are edging towards the door. The patient is bleeding some, onto his carpet. The RN returns with his blood pressure cuff and sterile dressings. "Go find a thick stick to splint it," she says to the young woman in the group, who gulps and goes outside.

"Car wreck," says the younger man. "My father is in the best shape. They are still trying to get the other people out of the vehicles. We won't be your last patients today...."


https://panampost.com/sabrina-martin/2015/10/20/venezuelan-doctors-make-a-run-for-it/
I have been invited to a 12 week course on aromotherapy. I think I'd rather brush up surgical skills the way things are going....
Our county hospital, the only hospital in the county, had NO orthopedists for three months this year. Currently we have one....

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